The ‘Do Not Track’ saga is not over, German court rules in LinkedIn case

For those who need a reminder, Do Not Track (DNT) is a browser setting that was proposed by security experts around 14 years ago, to let users of online services tell tech companies to, well, not track them. The big browser makers all added support, but without legal compulsion, online services mostly failed to respect the preferences users were expressing through the setting. It stalled in the standardization process and, for all intents and purposes, ceased to be a thing several years ago.

Yesterday, however, a German regional court in autumnal Berlin (where I reside; it’s blustery out there) ruled that DNT actually does have legal force under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.

The case involves LinkedIn, which informs its users that it doesn’t respond to their DNT signals, on the basis that it’s never been standardized. German consumer advocates argued that LinkedIn’s notice misled users into thinking DNT was legally irrelevant and fine to ignore, despite the fact that the EU GDPR gives people the right to object (including by automated means) to being tracked—which is exactly what the DNT setting exists to do. The court agreed, saying LinkedIn was breaking competition law by misleading consumers.

“When consumers activate the ‘Do Not Track’ function of their browser, it sends a clear message: They do not want their surfing behavior to be spied on for advertising and other purposes,” said Rosemarie Rodden, a legal officer at the Federation of German Consumer Organizations, which sued LinkedIn, in a statement.

However, as the German tech publication Heise pointed out, the Berlin court didn’t actually order LinkedIn to respect people’s DNT signals—it just said DNT was a valid way for people to exercise their legal rights, and LinkedIn can’t suggest otherwise. The Microsoft-owned company (which is obliged by Californian law to disclose whether or not it respects DNT signals) tells me it will appeal the ruling, so let’s see where this ends up. Either way, it seems Do Not Track is not, in fact, dead.

The other big German story relates to a new partnership between Microsoft and Siemens, aimed at baking generative AI into industrial processes.

The software and industrial giants have come up with a manufacturing assistant called the Siemens Industrial Copilot, which will speed up the process of writing and testing automation code (while generating more business for Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI cloud service). The new copilot will also assist maintenance staff with repairs.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella signaled that this was just the start of a push to “accelerate innovation across the entire industrial sector.” Unlike with the DNT case, it’s not hard to see where this is going.

David Meyer

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—SEC enforcement chief Gurbir Grewal, announcing a fraud suit against SolarWinds and its former security VP Tim Brown, over “misstatements, omissions and schemes” related to security vulnerabilities that resulted in the hacking of government agencies and companies.

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BEFORE YOU GO

Not so smooth. An AI-generated smoothie store—yes really—in downtown San Francisco has apparently shut down after less than two months. The Guardian reports on images that the owners had uploaded to the BetterBlends page on Google Maps:

“The fruits in the store window are, on closer inspection, unrecognizable blobs of fruit-colored things. The clear plastic cups are branded with gibberish characters that don’t spell anything and filled with lumpy smoothie-ish mixtures. They are cartoonishly large in the customers’ hands, one of which has only three too-long fingers.”